Is Patient Safety Threatened By HIT?
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
ECRI’s latest report has health IT issues at the top of a list of patient safety hazards.
An ECRI report, 2015 Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for Healthcare Organizations, lists health information technology as one of the top hazards to patients. “These are things we think warrant people's attention,” says Bill Marella, executive director of operations and analytics for ECRI. “It's time to take stock and look at whether good systems are in place to prevent these kinds of problems.”
Modern Healthcare reports that, since 2009, the group's patient-safety organization has collected more than 500,000 adverse-event reports from more than 1,000 hospitals. “This is more than just a list; it's a reminder that, despite the attention given to patient safety over the last 15 years or so, we can do better,” said Marella in a press release. “Healthcare providers, regardless of what setting they practice in, can start with our top 10 list of patient safety concerns and use it to guide their own discussions about patient safety and improvement initiatives.”
The 2015 list includes:
- alarm hazards: inadequate alarm configuration policies and practices
- data integrity: incorrect or missing data in EHRs and other health IT systems
- managing patient violence
- mix-up of IV lines leading to misadministration of drugs and solutions
- care coordination events related to medication reconciliation
- failure to conduct independent double checks independently
- opioid-related events
- inadequate reprocessing of endoscopes and surgical instruments
- inadequate patient handoffs related to patient transport
- medication errors related to pounds and kilograms
iHealth Beat explains researchers felt alarm fatigue was one of the greatest hazards to patient safety. Rob Schluth, senior project officer at ECRI said, “In our experience, alarm‐related adverse events – whether they result from missed alarms or from unrecognized alarm conditions – often can be traced to alarm systems that were not configured appropriately.” In August, ECRI issued a guidebook to help combat alarm fatigue.
“Information technology is pervading healthcare delivery today in a way it did not 10 years ago,” Marella said. “It's enabling us to do things we couldn't do before … but as with any disruptive technology, it also can have unintended consequences.”